


we were a done deal, darling

by galaxyowl



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyowl/pseuds/galaxyowl
Summary: Five happy endings for Vanya and Sissy that never were, and the one ending that was.
Relationships: Sissy Cooper/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 4
Kudos: 89





	we were a done deal, darling

1.

“Fine then,” Vanya says. “I’m staying with you.”

Sissy’s face softens. “Vanya, sweetheart,” she says, “you don’t mean that. If all what you’re telling me is true, if you’re really _from the future…_ You don’t belong here.”

“I do,” Vanya says. “I belong wherever you are.”

For a moment, Sissy looks like maybe she wants to argue. She doesn’t.

Five does argue. So does Allison. All of Vanya’s siblings are suddenly insistent that they stick together, and it’s the punchline to the joke that was Vanya’s childhood: here it is, here’s everything she wanted, the attention and affection and camaraderie, and she is going to walk away from all of it.

They let her go, in the end. Which is to say that after half an hour of yelling and back-and-forth and tears, she turns and walks out of the barn and meets Sissy in the car. But Luther doesn’t put himself between her and the exit, and Allison doesn’t rumor her into staying, which means that they are _letting_ her go, whether they realize it or not.

Vanya and Sissy drive to California.

They stay with Sissy’s friend for a month or so before moving to Los Angeles, where Vanya gets a job shuffling papers around. Every inch of it is dull and uninteresting but it puts a roof over their heads and food on their table, and she gets to come home every day to the sight of Sissy’s smile, so Vanya decides that she’s fine with it.

They make dinner together in their tiny kitchen. They make friends in the city, ones who understand all too well what it means for two women to be living together like this. They make a life, and it’s terrifying sometimes, but it’s full of more love than Vanya once would have thought possible.

2.

Sissy Cooper is born in 1983, and she meets Vanya Hargreeves in 2018 when she comes to drop her son off for violin lessons. The talk, in tiny pieces, at drop-offs and pickups. The conversations drift from smalltalk into something else. Sissy tells Vanya about her divorce. Vanya tells Sissy about the book. It’s almost a friendship.

Harlan bristled with excitement all through that first lesson, but by the sixth or seventh Vanya can tell he’s lost interest, and she isn’t all that surprised when she gets the call from Sissy explaining that he’s going to stop taking lessons for now.

“I’m so sorry,” Sissy says. “Harlan really likes you, and you seem like an excellent teacher. It’s just…”

“It’s fine,” Vanya says. “Really. Violin’s not for everyone. Trust me.”

It isn’t as if it’s the first time Vanya’s had a student quit on her; it’s an inconvenient loss of income, but that’s all. So why is she so tense as she stands there, holding the phone to her ear? Why does this feel like she’s losing something?

This conversation is going to end, she realizes. She’s not going to get another chance.

“Sissy,” Vanya says, “do you want to get coffee together sometime?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and Vanya adds, “It’s fine, you don’t have to—”

“No, no.” Sissy laughs. “I’d love to, Vanya. Coffee sounds wonderful."

(When the man who calls himself Leonard Peabody asks her out, Vanya awkwardly breaks it to him that she has a girlfriend, and that she’d rather keep their relationship purely teacher-student, if that’s all right. He doesn’t come to another lesson after that.)

3.

Vanya’s siblings never find her.

Which means, of course, that there is no apocalypse in 1963. The rest of the Hargreeves make it back to the present, or they don’t. Vanya doesn’t know about any of it.

What Vanya knows is that six months after she arrives, she and Sissy take Harlan and the car and the coffee can of wadded-up bills and drive off into the sunset together.

They have a plan. Sissy has a friend that they can stay with. Carl will wake up in the morning and find them gone, and if there’s anything like justice in this world none of them will ever see him again. California is, after all, a long way away.

Sissy falls asleep with her head on Vanya’s shoulder about an hour before they reach where they’re stopping for the night. Vanya looks at her as the moonlight turns her gold hair silver, and thinks that maybe this is what love is supposed to look like.

(Vanya never gets her memory back. She dreams about school uniforms and white pills and violin music for the rest of her life, but they’re nothing more than dreams.)

4.

Vanya and her siblings go back to 2019, and leave Sissy and Harlan behind. Immediately, there’s the whole mess with the Sparrow Academy, and apocalypse round three, and the situation with the Commission and the chronobombs, and—well, suffice to say there’s an awful lot of the usual nonsense that has become Vanya’s life at this point, and before she knows it it’s been almost a year since she last spoke to Sissy. Then two years. Three. Four.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, things return to something like normal. Or, no, they don’t _return_ , because it’s nothing like what it was. It’s a new kind of normal. A better one, Vanya thinks most days.

For instance, she talks to her siblings more than once every couple of years. And that includes _Five_ , this new strange version of Five who is impossibly old and impossibly young at the same time but more importantly is here and alive, and this time when he stops by her apartment she says, “Would it be possible to go back to the ‘60s?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I just…” Vanya sighs. It’s a stupid idea. “I told Sissy that if there was ever a time when we could be together without our family’s whole… mess, that I would come back for her.”

“Vanya,” Five says, “you don’t seriously want to live in the 1960s?”

“No,” she says. “But I assume that if we could get there, we could get back?”

He is silent a moment. As far as she knows, he hasn’t time-traveled once since they made it home, and it isn’t as if it’s something that’s gone well in the past. He’s going to say no.

“Maybe,” Five says.

“What?”

“Maybe,” he says. “I’ll have to run some calculations. I’ll… I’ll see what I can do.”

It’s a testament to how much things have changed in these last couple years that he doesn’t object when Vanya wraps him into a hug.

(Vanya appears in the middle of Sissy’s kitchen in a glowing blue portal and Sissy startles for an instant, before she recognizes Vanya, and her face softens into something more familiar.

In the end, she takes Vanya’s hand as they step into the future, together.)

5.

“I can protect you,” Vanya says, in the farmhouse. “I promise. _We_ can protect you. Please.”

“I...” Sissy meets her gaze. “All right.” She laughs. “Sure, Vanya. I’ll come to the future with you.”

She does.

Vanya keeps her promise, despite everything. _Because_ of everything. Sissy and Harlan are safe, even while they’re confused and overwhelmed by the present day. The wonders of HD television are no match for superhero Vanya Hargreeves.

When they get married—and boy was _that_ its own whole conversation, the idea that the two of them could _get married_ —all of the living Hargreeves siblings are at there.

(Allison insists on going dress shopping with Vanya, and when Vanya gently tells her that she has no intentions of wearing a dress, absolutely _insists_ on going tux shopping with her, despite the fact that there’s no way that’s nearly as interesting. Vanya is more grateful than she’d care to admit.)

1.

Vanya allows herself one more heartbeat to look at back at the farmhouse that has been her entire world this past month. Has it really only been a month? Some part of her still feels like her life began the day Sissy hit her with the car.

Does that mean it’s ending now?

One of her siblings calls her name. They’re going to leave, go back to 2019 and try again. Together. There’s a future waiting for her.

The wind ruffles the grass, and Vanya thinks how there was a time when she would have given anything for just a single moment of someone looking at her the way that Sissy had. Now, at least, she knew it was possible.

An ending can be a beginning, too.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song "done deal" by grace petrie
> 
> you can come shout about tua with me on tumblr & twitter @confusedbluesky


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